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Deciding where to install the application depends on how you want to set up the environment. If all your workstations will be connected to the network, installing the application to a central server is more efficient. A user would have to wait for only a few files to get copied to his workstation in this scenario. ZENworks for Desktops often installs an application faster than the vendor's setup program.

Always use a "clean" workstation with just the base OS for the ZENworks for Desktops snapshot process. If you're running the NetWare client it can be on the workstation, too. The snapshot process captures the application installation, and you can store installation information as a text file, which is then transformed into an application object in eDirectory. That way, you can use the same process on other workstations. Be sure to remove any extra registry settings the snapshot process may have picked up, such as detected registry changes under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Explorer key, which stores things like the Explorer window sizes.

Everything ZEN

With ZENworks, the client workstation runs the Novell Application Launcher (NAL) program or NAL Explorer. NAL searches the eDirectory tree for applications the user is authorized to use, and NAL Explorer places application icons on a user's Windows Explorer start menu.

Depending on your eDirectory tree design and where you put your application objects, your ZENworks for Desktops clients might be talking to more servers than necessary when searching for application icons, including eDirectory servers over the WAN. That extra chatter means slower performance.

The process works like this. NAL finds the user policies in eDirectory. So if the user object is Drews.Staff.ENGR, NAL reads its policy. Then it goes up the organizational tree and checks the Staff.ENGR organizational-unit object and, finally, the ENGR organization object.

All this tree-climbing is inefficient, so make sure NAL reads the data only off the Staff.ENGR organizational unit object. Configure the organizational unit objects' setting on ZENworks for Desktops' Application Launcher tab to "top of configuration tree." That way, the application launcher won't search the tree at higher levels for configuration information, which improves its performance.

You can further optimize performance by selecting the "set application inheritance level" setting. This determines how far up the directory tree to search for application associations. The downside is that the NAL client can miss some application privileges if it is set too low.

ZENworks for Desktops' diagnostic tool, meanwhile, helps you see details such as where each application object originated--a user association or a workstation association, for instance--and the last time it was run. This can help you determine why some applications aren't showing up in a user's NAL, for example. It also lets you view the application launcher configuration and turn on some debugging information. To bring up this slick tool, go to the properties page by right-clicking on the NAL Icon on the system tray, or on About->Help from the application window. Then hold down the F2 key and press the More button.

The bottom line with ZENworks for Desktops is that it off-loads much of the work in the painstaking process of managing workstations. Here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, being able to distribute 400 applications to any workstation has made the product a worthwhile investment. We've been able to deploy more applications, faster.

James E. Drews is a network administrator for the CAE Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Send your comments on this article to him at jdrews@nwc.com.

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